Live from Toshiba's CES press conference
10:00 - a.m. - We're here, the HD DVD players and TVs under covers are on stage.
10:07 - Ladies and gentlemen please take your seats
10:10 - Director of Corporate Communications just took the stage - Next up: Jodi Sally to "address" their HD DVD business, but first, President & CEO Mr. Ozaka
10:12 - Great success for Regza LCDs and HD DVD, strong Q4 sales for HD DVD - Really, it says so on the slide.
10:13 - "Very surprised by Warner announcement about HD DVD...etc", basically the same as the press release issued earlier.
10:15 - Jodi Sally is on stage "It's been a tough day for me (laughs)".
10:16 - "Only HD DVD has deliver on its commitments to the market, bringing advanced functionality and affordability"
"We've been declared dead before...unit sales in Q4 were the best to date. Nearly 1 million dedicated HD DVD players are in the market" "HD DVD has always put the interests of consumers ahead of companies"
10:18 - "Thanks for your continued support", a slide of all the awards HD DVD has gotten in the past year -- and that's it.
10:20 - On to the HDTVs - a slide of Regza's awards from the past year.
10:21 - The death of the RPTV, as presented by bar graph. "Flat panel TV is 81% of the TV business and growing fast"
10:24 - Targeting 10% market share in LCD 32-inch and above in 2008.
10:25 - 1. Black is the new black, 2. 1080p is the new 720p. 3. 120Hz is the new 1080p. 4. No value over $3k --- The HDTV facts according to Toshiba
10:27 - All new models with DynaLight - adjustable from 7 - 10 times the panel's contrast level, up from 5x last year
10:28 - AV500 series - 19 - 42-inch LCDs, all shipping in spring. Pixel Pure fourth-gen system provides 16,384 levels of gradation with 10 bit displays
10:31 - New Video Bypass circutiry on all Regza models improves by 48ms response time on 120hz models - no gaming mode necessary. Bezels slimmed to 1.5-inch at the most. 1080p available as small as 32-inch in the RV530 series. Replaces HL167
10:34 - Motion Vector 120Hz. New feature - 5:5 film pulldown mode. split screen 60/120Hz processing for comparison.
10:34 - New XV540 flagship model 42-, 46-, 52 -inch models get new color processing, 108% of NTSC color. Hits in spring
10:35 - XF550 Cinema Series in 42- 46- and 52-inch models with DynaLight Super Contrast for superior black levels.
10:35 moving to fall/spring product introductions
10:37 - Talking about the power of Cell chip to do super SD2HD upconversion. Claims it makes SD look like HD. ( Somehow we doubt that)
10:42 - Annnnd we're out, no Q&A (We had some interesting questions to ask about HD DVD)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alexander @ Jan 6th 2008 1:11PM
Blu-Ray Rules lol plus I had an xbox 360 hd dvd player and it broke still did not receive my box to send it in from microsoft
Kyle @ Jan 6th 2008 1:11PM
Man, I'm refreshing this page like every 10 seconds.
MoonMan @ Jan 6th 2008 1:14PM
This will probably be the most anticipated and watched conference at CES in light of Warner Bros announcement on Friday.
Alexander @ Jan 6th 2008 1:15PM
holy cow shes hideous
Adrian Williams @ Jan 6th 2008 2:07PM
I'll hit it
//no morals
Neebs @ Jan 6th 2008 1:16PM
Poor corporate executives...
Alexander @ Jan 6th 2008 1:19PM
1 million players not movies man they lost
GAS @ Jan 6th 2008 1:22PM
So they spent a grand total of 3 minutes talking about hd-dvd? OUCH!!
Dan @ Jan 6th 2008 9:55PM
Obviously HD DVD is not a top priority and not much good has happened. If they don't promote it well, they will lose
Coolone3000 @ Jan 6th 2008 1:22PM
We get it Alexander.
Alexander @ Jan 6th 2008 1:24PM
lol ok i'll stop posting for now lol
vancanucksfan @ Jan 6th 2008 1:23PM
ahaha that's it? they should've just saved face and not show up. this made them look even more lame
steveo @ Jan 6th 2008 1:24PM
Interesting sales chart. So, HD DVD had just a little over 51% of the hardware sales for 2007. I would have thought it would have been more, since it seemed that most people were buying the PS3 for their Blu player, shich this chart obviously does not include. A lot of people must have taken advantage of the sub-$300 Blu players around Christmas.
I wonder if the sales include the 360 add-on? If so, would that fall under Tosh for manufacturing it, or Microsoft ("other") for branding?
Drew @ Jan 6th 2008 1:25PM
For a display company, you'd think they could get their slides to look clearer.
zunq @ Jan 6th 2008 1:28PM
Can't believe all the HD-DVD haters. Toshiba makes players that are half the price of Blu-ray players, yet they will defend it to the death. It's quite sad. Of course they have to be louder and flamboyant to justify spending double on the same player as they have more to lose. As for me going HD-DVD early($200), I've had nothing to lose. I got it for a bargain and it has already paid for itself, and I'll probably go neutral once the PS3 goes to $300. So I'll be spending around $500 for BOTH formats while the early blu-ray adopters had to spend $500-$1000. HD-DVD wins.
NoAndThen @ Jan 6th 2008 1:51PM
No, HD-DVD WAS doing pretty good, but NOW they lost. It's really more the whole 'NOW' thing that matters, as opposed to 'early-adopter' status. Nice little anonymous-elitist post though. Get over it.
Q DuB @ Jan 6th 2008 1:51PM
The thing about those "bargain" HD-DVD players is that most of them are only capable of processing a picture up to 1080i. I have never seen a Blu-Ray player that was not 1080p compliant.
reader101 @ Jan 6th 2008 1:53PM
I don't get it.
I run HD-DVD and BD movies on a HD projector (120" screen) and sincerely I don't see any diff in picture quality (both very good). I guess a regular 42-45" LCD/Plasma TV would be near impossible to tell the diff (if calibrated similarly and assuming the same level of quality in authoring of the content).
And I do not even consider here that probably a lot of people have average quality displays or they didn't care to adjust them properly anyway.
So why this happiness that the company that did the least for consumer is bound to take the big cake just because they have more money to "bribe" content creators?
It's sad that the battle is given on the front who pays more and the consumer is just a spectator to all these.
Geoffrey Sperl @ Jan 6th 2008 2:17PM
$199 (or $179, which is Amazon's current price on the A3) is not half the price of $249. And don't go on about the $98 pre-Thanksgiving sales from certain stores. That only happened sporadically and in very limited amounts. The low-end players from each camp are relatively close in terms of (non-sale) price.
Stop living in the bubble of the gadget community. We all like the news and the posts, but the normal consumer doesn't have any damn clue about this stuff and could care less. And they are the ones who make the decisions - not us.
Hey Alex @ Jan 6th 2008 2:30PM
What model Blu-Ray player is $249 and where? The ads I keep seeing for Blu-Ray players are in the $300-400 range or above.
josh @ Jan 6th 2008 2:41PM
"The thing about those "bargain" HD-DVD players is that most of them are only capable of processing a picture up to 1080i. I have never seen a Blu-Ray player that was not 1080p compliant."
The thing about bargain players is that people who buy high end televisions aren't going to buy low priced players no matter how good they are, so they aren't the audience for the low cost players. There are FAR more people with 720p and 1080i TVs than 1080P sets; if you can't use 1080p anyway, why pay for it (well, besides the idea of future proofing, but future proofing is a little ridiculous in a format war, especially when one of the formats is having a hell of a time implementing their full spec).
Personally I am disapointed in the apparent decline of HD DVD myself. The media was cheaper to produce, especially the multi-layered media, which meant that the manufacturing costs are much lower. The iHD technology by all accounts is far easier and quicker to develop with as well (considering MS designed it and made the development tools, and they make the best dev tools in the industry, I would believe it). Both mean that discs should be cheaper to produce and hypothetically cheaper to the consumer (right now we don't see that a great deal, but as soon as it catches on and the Walmart factor kicks in to drive down prices it will really manifest itself).
But more of interest to me is the different mentality of the two behomoths duking it out. Sony is now first and formost a content company with a technology arm at its side; toshiba is a technology company through and through. WHat that means is that Toshiba is interested in impressing customers and making them happy, whereas sony is interested in doing everything possible to control their content. I tend to prefer the company that *doesn't* put rootkits on their media to stick it to consumers, so it saddens me to see Sony getting the upper hand.
NuttyBars @ Jan 6th 2008 4:11PM
@reader101
Toshiba lost the right to complain about bribing studios when they bribed Paramount several months back.
They really left Sony with no choice if they wanted to survive -- and that single choice also happened to be a checkmate. Very poor brinksmanship on Toshiba's part.
I was sitting on the fence, but I a buying a PS3 today.
zargon @ Jan 6th 2008 6:28PM
@NuttyBars
Actually the BDA probably started it all. Plus the money to Paramount and Dreamworks was not a direct payment, it was promised in promotional help... which is not exactly a bribe.
After the Paramount and Dreamworks switched all the Blu-ray studios at IFA refused to talk about pay-offs for their exclusivity with Disney using the famous "no comment." Their actions really seemed fishy and there is no doubt in my mind that the BDA and money had something to do with it.
Alexander @ Jan 6th 2008 1:43PM
I said I would stop but notice how they mention the power of the cell chip which also powers a certain station's blu-ray man toshiba is hypocrites
Shinogu @ Jan 6th 2008 1:45PM
Nothing hypocritical about it. Wasn't Toshiba in on Cell for however long? With Sony and IBM, yeah.
nick @ Jan 6th 2008 2:09PM
The Cell chip was jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba.
Sony has since sold their cell chip production facility to Toshiba, to concentrate on their core business. So Toshiba is responsible for producing the cell for Sony, among others.
Andrewsa @ Jan 6th 2008 1:46PM
When is the Sony/Blu-ray conference?
Khattab @ Jan 6th 2008 1:46PM
That's it? Poor Toshiba, thought CES was there to present NEW stuff. The "new" LCD Lines represent (more or less) just a design update. And BTW: that's it, HD-DVD is dead.
Au revoir...
James Cameron @ Jan 6th 2008 1:48PM
Toshiba is pissed because they were making tons of money with HD but with the announcement of WB going over to BR, Tosiba will have to compete with Sony and other brands if BR is the only one left standing and with HD dying a slow death.
MI @ Jan 6th 2008 3:24PM
Actually they've been loosing money, and their stock has been dropping since July. I would imagine at this point their shareholders will have to pull the plug on this as the egomaniacs writing the press releases aren't going to do it.
Jeremy @ Jan 6th 2008 1:49PM
Q4 sales mean nothing when you'll only have 2 studios putting movies out for the format.
No mention of the future? :(
My PS3 will be put to get use I guess.
biomechanic @ Jan 6th 2008 1:50PM
Of course Toshiba is going to have a big chunk of the pie. They're the only brand that makes HD DVD players.
Hey Alex @ Jan 6th 2008 2:18PM
If I'm not mistaken, in addition to Toshiba, LG, Onkyo, Thomson/RCA, and Samsung are manufacturers who have produced units capable of playing HD DVD.
MI @ Jan 6th 2008 3:35PM
The LG and Samsungs are both Blu-HDVD combo players, and the Onkyo is a re-branded Toshiba (as was the no longer available Thompson / RCA HDV500). The only company making HDVD players is in fact Toshiba.
kingofwale @ Jan 6th 2008 1:52PM
wow, no Q&A?
if you don't want to answer questions, why even have a conference to begin with? Geez.
LJKelley @ Jan 6th 2008 1:52PM
I have to agree with Toshiba that HD DVD was best for the consumers, but obviously certain companies thought more DRM and Region Coding and a Half-bakes Format was better.
As long as Toshiba is fighting for HD DVD, so will I. Let us see how long Universal and Paramount stick (atleast another year) and what tricks Toshiba/Microsoft have up their sleaves.
Geoffrey Sperl @ Jan 6th 2008 2:24PM
There's nothing left. Blu-ray has 75% of the content production sewn up. Paramount's big seller for 2008 (the new Indiana Jones flick) will not be bound by the terms of the HD-DVD agreement since it is a Spielberg movie and his movies are not tied to HD-DVD exclusively.
As I've said in another post, this isn't checkmate yet. But is is certainly check, and I don't see that HD-DVD has more than two moves left in it.
All of us who were early adopters and cared to educate ourselves knew the risk. I went with Blu-ray simply because I could get a PS3 on discount last summer and, if Blu-ray lost the war, I still would be using the PS3. But I was well aware that Blu-ray could lose (especially since the Paramount deal came down a day or two after I installed my PS3)
On the plus side: You should be able to get a cheap, spare HD-DVD player or two later in the year and put it away for the time when your current player dies. That's what I was counting on if BD had lost.
Even @ Jan 6th 2008 2:39PM
You conveniently forgot to mention Paramount's Iron Man movie.
zargon @ Jan 6th 2008 3:34PM
The Warner deal was a 11th hour deal that Blu-ray was lucky to win. Why do you think Toshiba was gearing up for a huge party at CES? They thought they had Warner exclusivity and were going to through a party over it.
Warner did not want to go alone though and HD-DVD was in the deal with another major studio. Warner was looking to end the war and knew it could not be done unless they had another large player. The other studio backed out at the last minutes and Warner made the swift move to try to end the war, to swing the other way. Just think if Warner and the other studio would have announced full HD-DVD support. Everything would be opposite, with a lot of sour Blu-ray fans. While the end result was in favor of Blu-ray, Blu-ray supporters better be thanking their lucky stars that the studio backed out at the last minute.
It had to happen eventually and I wish it would have gone the opposite way just for the simple fact to get back at all the Blu-ray zealots and that cesspool known as Blu-ray.com, would have been worth many laughs. But what is done, is done. Blu-ray just needs to continue to get their act straight and finish of their spec, because a lot of HD-DVD supporters do not like they will be going backwards as far as features are concerned... that and playing almost double for a player with a unfinished spec.
I am hoping to score a Panasonic DMP-BD30K for about $300 or less (currently the only standalone player mostly of worth getting) to go neutral.
MI @ Jan 6th 2008 4:43PM
Who told you all that? One of the HDVD fan sites? The fact of the matter is that BOTH camps were offering Warner similar money. Toshiba / Microsoft also offered Fox a dump truck full of cash to switch, but they didn't find it worth it.
The difference between Paramount and Warner (or Fox for that matter) is that they don't think a few hundred million dollars was worth killing off the budding HD packaged media market (as microsoft is trying to?). What they said was likely true; 'there is no amount of money that would have effected their decision'. They're looking at a multi-billion dollar market, that needs a single format to survive. they made the only rational decision. That said who's going to turn down millions of dollars after the fact?
Simply put, this year could have been the huge Christmas for HD packaged media. Toshiba / Microsoft's pointless extension of the format war, and conning thousands of consumers into buying into a dying format prevented that. It also slowed the adoption of the winning format, as the suckers who just bought the $99-200 players, that looked like a bargains at the time, aren't going to buy a blu-ray player now that it's (again) the clear winner.
Yousty @ Jan 6th 2008 1:58PM
No mention of SED in their TVs? I'm sad :-(
darcyv @ Jan 7th 2008 3:21AM
SED is DEAD .... sorry
if you want to see the future of tv's .. take a look at the OLED sets, or my fav the new concept Pioneer Kuro Plasma line .. ultra thin, with absolute black
mmh @ Jan 6th 2008 2:09PM
You can almost hear them weeping.
Rodimus01 @ Jan 6th 2008 2:19PM
Wow they are really delusional on that pie chart to leave out the PS3 completely. HD DVD nearly a million that was the best part.
jason w @ Jan 6th 2008 2:22PM
Could you get any worse pictures of the speakers or is this just an editorial comment?
Jody @ Jan 6th 2008 2:24PM
You'd be weeping too if you were just stabbed in the back
Mark @ Jan 6th 2008 2:34PM
"Nearly 1 million dedicated HD DVD players are in the market"
See they are still counting the XBox addon. So lets count the PS3..
"Nearly 8 million Blu-ray players are in the market"
BLUE VICTORY @ Jan 6th 2008 2:51PM
Congratulations to the early adopters of BLUE-RAY. Was a risky choice but we won! The reason that make that possible was the fact thas MS and TOSHIBA only focus was to gain some time to prepare the MS HD Streaming service for the Xbox and other Media Centers. SONY was the only one thas focus in the implementation of a new format with best video and sound. LPCM Sound 5.1 is only possible with BLU-RAY and is tottaly pure CINEMA in my Onkyo AV Receiver TX-SR605 (HDMI 1.3a), not an amator sound like the compressed sound of the HD-DVD. If the HD-DVD lovers don't ear the the diference, buy another TV and a better AV Receveir (HDMI 1.3a) and you will ear the diference. Probabely you haven't eard the diference before because you have a TV and Soundsistem that sucks(like your HD-DVD). I Know what I'm talking about I have an Xbox HD-DVD and a PS3, I'm trying to sell my Xbox HD-DVD but nobody whant's it after the lattest news. Is anybody interested?
zargon @ Jan 6th 2008 3:23PM
You are so full of yourself, claiming to be able to "ear" the difference. I doubt in the blind test, that you would be able to pin point the difference between uncompressed audio and DTS-HD or TrueHD.
The uncompressed audio used by Blu-ray is a waste of space at little to no gain.
While I like less compression, compression is not always a bad thing. If it wasn't for compression we wouldn't have 1080 video on the media we have currently. Compression is a necessary evil, but when done right (like DD, DTS, TrueHD and DTS-HD) is just fine and delivers us high quality audio.
This whole chest pounding, mine is bigger than yours you people talk about it nothing more than just that... spec whoring.
zargon @ Jan 6th 2008 3:24PM
I also will gladly take your Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on off your hands if you don't want it since it is so bad, I will even pay shipping!